USA > Kentucky > A history of Kentucky and Kentuckians; the leaders and representative men in commerce, industry and modern activities, Volume I > Part 64
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served as executive officer until 1877 when he was elected president, retiring in 1883 and being succeeded by Rev. W. S. Ryland as chairman of the faculty. In 1869 he was elected president of the college, holding that position until June, 1898. In 1898 Rev. E. S. Alderman was elected president. He subse- quently resigned to reenter the ministry. The president at this writing (1911) is F. D. Perkins. .
Berea College was at one time the most
BETHEL FEMALE COLLEGE, HOPKINSVILLE
less energy who, dying, left behind him some- thing more precious than monuments, thou- sands of young women and men whose educa- tion had come from his friendly ministra- tion. There is no higher avocation than that of the faithful teacher and this Professor Rust was from the days of his young man- hood until those of the sere and yellow leaf of life in which he passed to his reward.
Professor Rust was succeeded by Noah K. Davis, LL. D., who resigned in 1873 to accept a chair in the University of Virginia, and was succeeded by Professor Leslie Wag- gener, an alumnus of the class of 1860, who
unique institution in the south, for the reason that its students were of the two races, white and black, who enjoyed equal educational facilities without distinction of color. Its founder was Rev. John G. Fee, a native Ken- tuckian, whose ideas as to slavery were in line with those of Gen. Cassius M. Clay, the im- perious and fearless Abolitionist whose story has been told elsewhere in this work. Mr. Fee had graduated from Augusta College and Lane Theological Seminary, and had entered the ministry of the Presbyterian church, but at the end of two years withdrew from that denomination because he was not in accord
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with it on the slavery question. Upon the invitation of General Clay, he established Berea church in Madison county, and around this church grew Berea College in 1855. The American Missionary Society lent the college financial aid and was in a sense a co-founder with Mr. Fee. The school prospered, and in 1869 had 301 students and seven teachers. The constitution of the institution declared that "this college shall be under an influence strictly Christian, and, as such, opposed to sectarianism, slave-holding, caste and every other wrong institution or practice." The aim of the institution, it was claimed, was to reach two classes of students, the poorer white people of the eastern part of the state and the colored element of the other portion. These two elements came to it in large numbers and commingled without regard to color. This was objectionable to the very large majority of the people of the state and the legislature enacted a law prohibiting coeducation of white and colored students. The college au- thorities denied the constitutionality of the law and appealed to the courts of the state, but were defeated in the lower as well as the court of appeals. The cause was taken to the supreme court of the United States, where the law was again sustained. The two races were separated and the work continued, with no one to protest against it.
Science Hill school at Shelbyville for the higher training of girls was founded March 25, 1825, by Mrs. Julia Tevis and her hus- band, Rev. John Tevis, of Kentucky Confer- ence of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It is quite proper that Mrs. Tevis' name should be mentioned first in this connection, for, although her husband was associated with her for some time in conducting the school and rendered efficient services in its behalf, yet the main burden of the enterprise, even from its inception, was borne by Mrs. Tevis and to her is to be attributed the largest share of its success. She also conducted it alone for
many years after Mr. Tevis' death. It has been well said that "few institutions were so entirely the work of one mind and hand." The school has always been and still is purely an individual enterprise, for, although nomi- nally placed under the care of Kentucky con- ference as early as 1829, the conference has never had any part in its management nor has it ever contributed anything to its support.
In its early days there was some prejudice against the higher education of women, but so narrow-minded a view could not endure and was in time overcome. After having been in operation for twenty-five or more years, during which time the reputation of the school was second to none other in the south, there were at times as many as 300 young women in attendance as students. Not even the war could stop its onward progress and it never suspended during the four years of that struggle, though the attendance was re- duced owing to many of its students having formerly come from the south.
Mrs. Tevis remained in the school and largely guided its fortunes until just before her death in 1880, with the assistance of her son, Dr. B. P. Tevis. On the fifty-fourth an- niversary of the founding of the school its proprietorship was transferred to Rev. W. T. Poynter, D. D., who died July 30, 1896, since which time the institution has been success- fully conducted by Mrs. Clara M. Poynter who had been associated with her husband in its control.
The list of colleges in Kentucky is too lengthy for detailed mention of each. To give to each the space demanded would be a pleasant task to anyone who cares for the proper training of the youth of the state, but there are limitations which must be recognized even in writing histories. Therefore those institutions which fail of extended and detailed notices are omitted, not because of any un- worthiness on their part, but because of their number. Clinton College at Clinton, a Bap-
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tist school of a high order, gives to young girls and boys an excellent training for the duties of life. Ogden College, at Bowling Green, owes its useful existence to the beneficence of Major Robert W. Ogden, who, in his will, left the sum of $50,000, "or so much thereof as may be necessary," to be used "in the purchase of suitable grounds and the erection thereon of appropriate buildings, in or near the town of Bowling Green, Kentucky, to be dedicated and devoted to the education therein of males or females, young men or young women, as my executor or executors may elect." The college has been successfully conducted for many years. Its buildings and grounds are valued at $40,000, while its productive funds are about $120,000. Union College at Bar- boursville, Knox county, is the adopted col- lege of Kentucky conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church North, in contradistinction to the Methodist Church South, an anomalous distinction which leads to strange wondering by those who do not understand why politics and religion should enter into the churches. The college owes its existence largely to the efforts of Rev. Daniel Steven- son1, D. D., who from 1863 to 1867, was su- perintendent of public instruction in Ken- tucky. The foundation year of this college was 1886, since which time it has done a good work to the great advantage of the section of the mountains in which it is located. The one who was the chief contributor towards purchasing the property; who was afterwards largely instrumental in supplying the pressing needs of the college by meeting deficiencies in its current expenses and who laid the founda- tion of its endowment, was Mrs. Fannie Speed, of Louisville.
Loretto Academy, an institution for the education of girls, has the honor of being the first institution founded for the higher educa- tion of women in the Mississippi valley, with a continuous existence to the present time. Its beginning was a little school opened on Har-
din's creek, in Marion county, by Miss Anne Rhodes, early in 1812. She was soon joined by Misses Mary Rhodes, Nellie Morgan, Christine Stuart and Anna Havern, and these five young women became the nucleus of a Catholic sisterhood, a religious order for the education of young ladies. The order is known as the "Sisters of Loretto, or the Friends of Mary at the Foot of the Cross." The school was meant to provide for the education of the rising generation in what was then a wilderness, and its foundation was en- couraged by Bishop Flaget, the first Catholic bishop of the west including Kentucky.
The high purposes of its foundation have been ever kept in mind, and Loretto has sent from its walls thousands of well-trained young women.
Nazareth Academy, in Nelson county, was almost contemporaneous with its neighbor. Loretto, and like it is under the care of the Catholic church. It was founded in 1814, through the efforts of five young women, to give educational training to the children of the sturdy pioneer farmers. Their efforts not only led to the forming of an academy, but to the founding of the order known as the "Sisters of Charity of Nazareth." Nazareth has graduated many young women and its good educational work continues.
Logan Female College, at Russellville, has long furnished a high mental training to the daughters of Logan county, and may be said to have been founded in 1846 by William Wires who, in that year, opened a school in Russellville for the training of boys and girls in the higher branches. Out of this school grew the college. The institution, like many another of its kind, met vicissitudes, but in its dark hours help always came and it was saved to do the good work for which it was founded. Its first graduating class in 1861 numbered but two, but there was a steady in- crease and now more than two hundred hold diplomas from this college.
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Millersburg Female College was opened about 1850 by Col. Thornton F. Johnson, who had for a number of years previously presided over the Western Military Institute at George- town, Kentucky, and later at Blue Lick Springs. An interesting feature of this in- stitution is found in the fact that one of the faculty was a fine young Pennsylvanian who not many years later came to be known as the magnetic speaker of the national house of rep- resentatives, and who, in 1884, was the de- feated candidate of the Republican party for the presidency of the United States-James G. Blaine, of Maine. Mr. Blaine did not ac- company Colonel Johnson to Millersburg, but the latter had the assistance of three sisters, the Misses Stanwood, and to one of these ( Miss Hariett Stanwood) Mr. Blaine was subsequently married.
For a time, under other control, the college was co-educational ; later it was a mixed com- mon and high school. In 1859, the school was made exclusively female and, as such, has since continued. In 1878 the principal buildings were destroyed by fire, but not a single day's exercises were interrupted by this calamity. New quarters were rented and the school's affairs proceeded as though noth- ing very unusual had happened. New, larger and better buildings were erected and the school went on its successful and useful course. It was a good school in the beginning and is a good school today.
Sayre Female Institute, at Lexington, owes its existence to the munificence of David A. Sayre of that city for whom it was named. It was organized November 1, 1854, its first principal being Rev. H. V. D. Nevins. A charter was granted with power to confer collegiate degrees, March 10, 1856. The board of trustees is self-perpetuating, and in- cludes the mayor and city judge of Lexing- ton as ex-officio members. The property of the school can never be used for anything else than the education of girls, and all its in-
come must be used either to increase its facilities for such instruction or to add to the number of its beneficiary pupils. A moderate rate of tuition is charged by the school for its benefits, in the case of most of its pupils, but it offers a free scholarship to one pupil from each of the public schools of Lexington each year, and, besides this, grants gratuitous in- struction to many deserving students. Its course includes all grades from a primary de- partment to collegiate work of standard com- pass. It is conducted under Presbyterian auspices, although non-sectarian in manage- ment. Under the capable management it has always had, Sayre Institute has always en- joyed a high standard of usefulness and ex- erted a wholesome influence in behalf of an excellent standard of scholarship. The finan- cial foundation granted to it by Mr. Sayre places before it the prospect of widening and extending its influence for good in the future.
Caldwell College, at Danville, that long- time center of high education, was first opened in the fall of 1860, after the public spirited citizens of that town had generously sub- scribed to its founding. The opening of the school was unfortunate, as the war coming soon after deprived it of southern patronage and it was closed for a time. It opened after two years and began what promised to be a long and useful existence, but was compelled to again suspend by the misfortune of having the collegiate building destroyed by fire in April, 1876. The ground upon which the building had stood was divided into lots and sold, and, with the money thus obtained, new buildings were erected and the college re- opened in 1880; since whichi time it has had a prosperous and useful career.
Hamilton College, at Lexington, originally called Hocker Female College, after its founder, was opened in 1869 by Mr. James M. Hocker, who announced that he had for years cherished the purpose of consecrating a large portion of his time and means to the "up-
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building of an institution for young women, founded on Christian and scientific principles." The college is now and has been for most of its life, under the auspices of the Christian church and has a great and useful work in the educational field.
Other female schools of lesser degree, but
support of the schools for white pupils. It is probable that in no other state in the union are found as excellent school buildings for colored pupils as are to be seen in the cities and towns of Kentucky; and these are the result of taxation upon the property of the white people, as the colored people pay a com
CHRISTIAN COUNTY AND HOPKINSVILLE HIGH SCHOOL. HOPKINSVILLE
all of them useful, are the Jessamine Female Institute at Nicholasville, Stanford Female College at Stanford, and Owensboro Female College at Owensboro.
Before leaving the subject of education, it should be stated, for the enlightment of those persons in other states who are blinded by to the efforts of the good women of the prejudice, that the colored schools in Ken- tucky receive the same per capita from the state fund for their support that is paid to the
paratively small portion of the taxes devoted to education or to other purposes. The rural schools for white and for colored pupils- always separate-are not what they should be in many instances, but there is an awaken- ing in this respect among the people-thanks state more than to any other influence-and the reproach of inadequate school buildings is soon to be removed.
CHAPTER LVII.
KENTUCKY WOMEN IN POLITICS-TRAVELING LIBRARIES IN THE MOUNTAINS-IMPROVEMENT OF RURAL SCHOOLS-SCHOOL SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN-PRESERVATION OF FORESTS.
The author desires no credit to which he is not entitled; if, indeed, he be granted any for the character and matter of this history. For this reason, he states that the chapter was, at his request, written by Mrs. Madeline Mc- Dowell Breckinridge, of Lexington, Ken- tucky, an accomplished grand daughter of the only "Great Commoner," Henry Clay. Mrs. Breckinridge says :
"Since the women of Bryan Station first carried water to those early Kentuckians with- in the fort who were already presumably sup- plied with the mint and other accessories nec- essary to withstand a siege of the Indians, Kentucky women have done their full part, not only in every crisis of the state's history but in the humdrum and exacting routine of every day. The first formal recognition of the services of these Bryan Station women to their country, it is true, waited to be made by their own sex more than a hundred years afterward. But a male historian of Kentucky now asks that credit be given the women of Kentucky of the present day and generation for the work they are doing for the better- ment of their state, and it is a pleasure to lend a hand in giving this credit.
"The majority of Kentucky women today are engaged, as from the beginning of the state's history her women have been engaged, in that silent, inconspicuous, exacting and most important work which the United States census lists as "no occupation"-the work of making the homes for the men of the race;
bearing, rearing and nurturing the children; the ceaseless work of the wife, mother and housekeeper.
"But of late years the women of Kentucky have realized the truth of Bernard Shaw's aphorism that 'Politics is not something apart from home and the babies; it is home and the babies.' All unconsciously, by such slow de- grees that it has shocked neither themselves nor the community, women in Kentucky have gotten into politics; so we are told by those whose strong desire is to keep women and politics as far apart as possible-not that they love women more, but that they realize that the end of "politics" in its present unsavory sense is already begun when women begin getting into it.
"Kentucky, which in many ways in the last years has brought up the rear of the column in the list of states and territories, can now boast that in some things she is first. She has obtained practically the first compulsory school law and the first juvenile court law of any southern state; actually the first Bureau of Vital Statistics; and in the fight against tuberculosis, now on in earnest, has put into the work the first Field Secretary engaged by any state in the Union. Much legislation of which the state may be proud has been ob- tained either by the direct effort of women or as a result of their continued agitation. The Consumers' League and the Child Labor Com- mittee have obtained Child Labor laws and better protection for men and women in indus-
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try. The Equal Rights Association, with aid from the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and other women's organizations, can put to its credit the securing of property rights for women, culminating in the eminently just Husband and Wife bill of 1894; the co-guar- dianship bill secured in 1910, giving mothers an equal right in their children with fathers; the raising of the age of protection for girls; the establishment of houses of reform for juvenile offenders; a law requiring women physicians for the women's wards of the
sex.' They have usually formed the public sentiment that has demanded advanced legisla- tion, have taken the initiative in getting this legislation, and have been prominent in the work of every local community for its en- forcement. The result of women and men working together in the last few years has so far rescued Kentucky from her former back- ward position and set hier forward in the friendly rivalry of the states that the truth of Kentucky's motto, 'united we stand; divided we fall,' has again been demonstrated.
WESTERN KENTUCKY ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE
State Asylums for the Insane. Due to the exertions of women, a number of institutions of higher education, formerly open to male students only, are now co-educational. A dormitory for women students has been erected at the State University, a department of domestic science established, and a Dean of Women added to the faculty. In all the work of recent years for the preservation of health, for the protection of childhood and for education, Kentucky women have done not only their share but much more than the half which might be expected of the 'weaker
"The principal work of women in Kentucky has very naturally been along the line of edu- cational endeavor. They have worked for the most part inconspicuously through the old and familiar channels. In the mountains of Kentucky, where, before the creation of our normal schools and in the absence of railroads or wagon roads, the public schools had done little to insure the education of the people, the churches have done valiant work with such resources as they have been able to command from private individuals and from their church organizations. It is almost superfluous
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to say that in the founding and maintenance of the many excellent church schools in our mountains the greater part of the labor, the brains, the sinews of war, has been fur- nished by women. The Christian Woman's Board of Missions maintains two excellent schools for day and boarding pupils at Hazel Green and at Morehead, Kentucky, in which more than seven hundred pupils are listed. Schools are maintained by the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and practi- cally all of the denominations, at which hundreds of young men and women are obtaining good elementary educations, and in some cases what might be honestly defined as the higher education. A notable educational effort is the Woman's Christian Temperance Union Settlement School at Hindman, Ken- tucky, where about five hundred pupils are gaining not only the education of the books but, even more important, education in the domestic arts, in home-making, housekeeping, farming, care of the sick and prevention of discase. More than seven hundred pupils, for whom accommodation cannot be provided, are on the waiting list of this school.
"It is impossible to touch upon all of the activities of different groups of women for the betterment of the state in recent years. Perhaps the best that can be done is to tell in some detail of the work of an organiza- tion embracing some nine thousand women -- the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs.
"Fourteen years ago the Federation began its first educational work when it established traveling libraries in the mountains of Ken- tucky. Beginning with six cases of books, the work has grown until the last report made to the Federation showed that ninety-four cases, containing about 5,800 volumes, were circulating in twenty-nine mountain counties, and in these counties there are practically no other libraries; in most of them no railroads, and the wagon roads are practically impassable during the winter months. A little library of
books is sent to some custodian whose fidelity has been ascertained, that she may act as librarian for her neighborhood. Occasionally the library is kept in a schoolhouse, a 'church house,' a postoffice, or country store, but more often in the dwelling house of some woman who snatches an occasional moment of read- ing in the duties of caring for a large family. The appreciation and eagerness of the people was touchingly shown a few years ago when Miss Rawson, the chairman of the Federation committee, made a trip of several hundred miles on horseback visiting the libraries and librarians. They were everywhere fearful that the libraries might be taken from them. When the books are all read in any given library, or a lessening of interest is noted, that library is sent to headquarters to go forth on other missions, and one taken from some other field is sent in its stead.
"The work has finally assumed such propor- tions and the demands made upon the Federa- tion chairman of libraries have been such that she felt justified in demanding of the legis- lature that the state should take up the work and offer relief to the Federation committee. It is gratifying to record that a bill was passed at the session of the legislature in 1910 creating a State Library Commission, which will not only carry on the traveling library work but will further in every way the estab- lishment of free libraries in Kentucky and the training of librarians. By instruction of the legislature, the commission must always in- clude a representative of the Kentucky Fed- eration of Women's Clubs. Governor Will- son showed his good judgment by appointing not one, but three representatives-Miss Fannie C. Rawson of Louisville, chairman for the last eight years of the traveling library work ; Miss May Stone of Louisville and Mrs. Anita Flournoy of Paducah. Miss Rawson is known not only in Kentucky but throughout the south for her magnificent work in the es- tablishment and maintenance of schools and
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for social betterment through the Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Church South. The traveling library work of the Federation has been supplemented in the last few years by a concerted effort of the clubs to supply school libraries to the rural schools in all parts of Kentucky, and by care- fully prepared reports of the existing library situation in Kentucky. Free libraries have also been obtained, chiefly by the exertion of clubs of the Federation, in Versailles, Nichol-
president of the Eastern Normal School of Kentucky, was able to report that one hun- dred and ten of the one hundred and nineteen counties had been organized. Under the County Leagues hundreds of local district leagues were carrying on the work. As a re- stilt of the efforts of these neighborhood or- ganizations, thousands of dollars have been raised ; schoolhouses have been cleaned and repaired, yards have been planted and beauti- fied, books, pictures, manual training tools,
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